I search via voice on a mobile engine more often then not. The
query results typically return a paid-search ad at the top of the query list, so more often than not I click on the ad rather than scroll down to find the retailer's Web site.

During a
panel at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit in Key Largo, Fla., Experian Senior Director of Digital Acquisition Jennifer Tan touched on the importance of apps ranking high in the stores like Google
Play and Apple iTunes, where the majority of apps get discovered.

Ensuring that the app ranks high in store queries should become one priority for marketers. Sometimes it requires a high
volume of downloads. Ranking in the top 50 means 25,000 downloads daily, which may require running paid-search ads to drive brand awareness.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have been pushing
their respective mobile-first strategies to support retailers from Target to Neiman Marcus, as well as the move by consumers to use smartphones as their digital assistant. Even email messages drive
consumers to a mobile app or app download page. The shift continues to occur worldwide.

Alibaba's U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission initial public offering (IPO) filing highlights the company making progress in attracting smartphone users to its ecommerce services. In the
filing the company claims an annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $248 billion on 11.3 billion orders and 231 million active buyers and 8 million active sellers. In Q4 2013, mobile GMV accounted
for 19.7% of its GMV, up from 7.4% in the same period in the previous year.

Since the launch of Google Enhanced Campaigns in summer 2013, White lays out numbers on smartphone and tablet ad impressions and clicks that demonstrate
much better results. He tells us that smartphones and tablets, defined as mobile devices, for Performics' aggregate client base accounted for 44.7% of all paid-search clicks in Q1 2014 vs.
only 33.9% in Q1 2013. Mobile device clicks rose 55.1% year-over-year. Smartphones contributed 91%; and tablets, about 27%.